Ellis Peters - The Confession of Brother Haluin

“And tell him,” said Roscelin earnestly, “the lame brother... is her father...” His voice hung on the word with, wonder and awe. “Tell him I’m glad, say I owe him more than ever can be repaid. And tell him he need never fret for her happiness, for I’ll give my life to it.”

At about the same time that Cadfael dismounted in the court of Farewell, Adelais de Clary sat with her son in his private chamber at Elford. There had been a long and heavy silence between them. The afternoon was drawing to its close, the light dimming, and he had sent for no candles.

“There is a matter,” he said at length, stirring out of his moume stillness, “which has hardly been touched on yet. It was to you, madam, that the old woman came. And you sent her away with a short answer. To her death! Was that at your orders?”

Without passion she said, “No.”

“I will not ask what you know of it. To what end? She is dead. But I do not like your manner of dealing, and I choose to have no more ado with it. Tomorrow, madam, you shall return to Hales. Hales you may have for your hermitage. But do not come back to this house, ever, for you will not be admitted. The doors of every manor of mine except Hales are henceforth closed to you.”

Indifferently she said, “As you will, it is all one to me. I need only a little space, and may not need it long. Hales will do very well.”

“Then, madam, take your leave when you will. You shall have a safe escort on the road, seeing,” he said with bitter meaning, “that you have parted with your own grooms. And a litter, if you prefer to hide your face. Let it not be said that I left you to travel defenseless, like an old woman venturing out alone by night.”

Adelais rose from her stool and went out from him without a word.

In the hall the servants had begun to kindle the first torches and set them in their sconces, but in every corner, and in the smoky beams of the lofty roof, darkness gathered and clung, draped cobwebs of shadow.

Roscelin was standing over the central fire on its flagged hearth, driving the heel of his boot into it to tease it into life after the damped-down hours of the day. He still had Audemar’s cloak over his arm, the capuchon dangling from one hand, The light from the reviving flames gilded his stooping face into gold, smooth-cheeked, with elegant bones and a brow as fair as a girl’s, and on his dreaming lips the softest and most beguiling of smiles bore witness to his deep happiness. His flaxen hair swung against his cheek, and parted above the suave nape of his neck, the most revealing beauty of the young. For a moment she stood apart in the shadows to watch him, herself unnoticed, for the pleasure and the pain of experiencing again the irresistible attraction, the unbearable bliss and anguish of beholding beauty and youth pass by and depart. Too sharp and sweet a reminder of things ended long ago, and for years believed forgotten, only to burn up into new life, like the phoenix, when a door opened, and confronted her with the ruin the years had left of the beloved being.

She passed by silently, so that he should not hear, and turn upon her the too radiant, too exultant blue eyes. The dark eyes that she remembered, deeply and delicately set beneath arched black brows, had never looked so, never for her. Always dutiful, always wary, often lowered in her presence.

Adelais went out into the chill of the evening, and turned towards her own apartments. Well, it was over. The fire was ashes. She would never see him again.

“Yes, I have seen her,” said Brother Haluin. “Yes, I have spoken with her. I have touched her hand, it is warm flesh, woman’s flesh, no illusion. The portress brought me into her presence all unprepared, I could neither speak nor move. She had been so long dead to me. Even that glimpse I had of her in the garth among the birds... Afterward, when you were gone, I could not be sure I had not dreamed it. But to touch her, to have her call me by my name... And she was glad...

“Her case was not as mine, though God knows I would not say her burden has been any lighter. But she knew I was man alive, she knew where I was, and what I was, and for her there was no guilt, she had done no wrong but in loving me. And she could speak. Such words she offered me, Cadfael! ‘Here is one,’ she said, ‘who has already embraced you, with good right. Now with good right embrace her. She is your daughter. Can you conceive such a miracle? Giving the child to me by the hand, she said it. Helisende, my daughter - - not dead! Alive and young and kind and fresh as a flower. And I thought I had destroyed her, destroyed them both! Of her own sweet will the child kissed me. Even if it was only from pity - it must have been pity, how could she love one she never knew? - but even if it was only from pity, it was a gift beyond gold.

“And she will be happy. She can love as it best pleases her, and marry where her heart is. Once she called me, ‘Father,’ but I think it was as a priest, as first she knew me. Even so it was good to hear and will be sweet to remember.

“This hour we three have had together repays all the eighteen years, even though there was so little said between us. The heart could hold no more. She is gone to her duties now, Bertrade. So must I to mine, soon very soon... tomorrow... “

Cadfael had sat silent through the long, stumbling, eloquent monologue of his friend’s revelation, broken by long pauses in which Haluin was rapt away again into a trance of wonder. Not one word of the abominable thing that had been done to him, wantonly, cruelly, that was washed clean away out of the mind by the joy of its undoing, without a lingering thought of blame or forgiveness. And that was the last and most ironic judgment on Adelais de Clary.

“Shall we go to Vespers?” said Cadfael. “The bell has gone, they’ll all be in their places by now, we can creep in unnoticed.”

From their chosen dim corner in the church Cadfael scanned the young, clear faces of the sisters, and lingered long upon Sister Benedicta, who had once been Bertrade de Clary. Beside him Haluin’s low, happy voice intoned the responses and prayers, but what Cadfael was hearing in his own mind was the same voice bleeding words slowly and haltingly, in the darkness of the forester’s hayloft, before dawn. There in her stall, serene, fulfilled, and content, stood the woman he had tried to describe. “She was not beautiful, as her mother was. She had not that dark radiance, but something more kindly. There was nothing dark or secret in her, but everything open and sunlit, like a flower. She was not afraid of anything - not then. She trusted everyone. She had never been betrayed - not then. Only once, and she died of it.”

But no, she had not died. And certainly at this moment, devout and dutiful, there was nothing dark or secret in her. The oval face shone serene, as she celebrated with joy the mercy of God, after years. Without any lingering regret; her contentment was without blemish. The vocation she had undertaken unblessed, and labored at against the grain, perhaps, all these years, surely reached its true wholeness only now, in the revelation of grace. She would not have turned back now even for that first love. There was no need. There are seasons of love. Theirs had passed beyond the storms of spring and the heat of summer into the golden calm of the first autumn days, before the leaves begin to fall. Bertrade de Clary looked as Brother Haluin looked, confirmed and invulnerable in the peace of the spirit. Henceforth presence was unnecessary, and passion irrelevant. They were eased of the past, and both of them had work to do for the future, all the more eagerly and thoroughly for knowing, each of them, that the other lived and labored in the same vineyard.